Rise and Walk
by ainokitsune
Summary: Don't you know there's a war on?


_Warnings: Gore, language._

_Note: It's a blurb, really—a writing exercise. I was reading something with PTSD and cuddling and it made me think, "Aw! I'd like to write something with PTSD and no cuddling." So I did. It's, uh, kind of bleak, actually._

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**Rise and Walk**

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_Don't you know there's a war on?_

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It rips through the house, all thunder and wind. One minute the girl's standing across the room, staring at him with her mouth half-open, the next she's plastered against the wall alongside him, and screaming. And the windows rattle in the not-wind and the whole house shakes, and the girl just splits in half, tears open right next to him, and the entire room is painted in blood.

It takes less than a heartbeat. Less than the space of a breath.

He's waiting for it to be his turn, but instead he hits the ground, hard. Sam's finished it, then. The house is quiet again and that means it's over. So that's okay. His head aches a little from where he hit the wall, and his arm and shoulder are sore, but there's nothing wrong, he's not actually injured.

He's all right.

Sam finds him about six or seven minutes later. Comes in the room, takes in the horror-show mess on the walls, ceiling and floor. Looks at the sad pile in the corner. Looks at Dean.

He doesn't say anything, just goes out and collects a bag—a _bag_—and they do what they can for her, because a terrible death like that is just asking for trouble. And so what if she was a person, and had a name, and people who loved her? Now she's dangerous. Now that she's dead.

They burn her down by the river, under the bridge. It's so far removed from the highway no one will smell it for hours. Maybe days.

There's nothing they can do. There's nothing anyone can do.

They're out of town before sunrise. Sam drives. Dean's done what he can to get the blood off, and changed into a fresh set of clothes and scrubbed at his hair, at the ashes and dirt in his hair, dumped an entire bottle of water over himself and scrubbed his skin raw, and called it even. The best he can hope for. The best anyone could hope for.

They're driving as the sun comes up. Dean's got blood under his nails and he doesn't even know why. Sam looks at him, catches his glance, looks at his hands. Says, "No, we'll stop. Two more towns, and we'll stop."

Dean lets him get the room. He can't imagine what he looks like.

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It's not the way it goes. Not in sounds or in memories. Not the sound of her voice, of her screaming. Not the noise she made when she split open. Not the impossible amount of blood crammed into a human body. The marvel of the human body. The sheer technical complexity, the engineering, the _craft_. Not any of that.

No. He sits in the sun by the door to the room, and runs his thumb in circles around the knuckle of his ring finger. His nostrils flare as he inhales. The marvel of engineering. The noises it makes when it dies. She was nine years old. She screamed. A lot.

An awful lot, packed into such a tiny space.

He knows he's smiling. Not because anything's happened that made him smile. It's just that his lips have pulled back, his cheeks stretched. There's a hollow space behind his teeth. The lower half of his jaw is disconnected from the upper half. There's a bubble, or a hollow balloon, keeping his face from having anything to do with the inside of his head.

Sam brings coffee, and he drinks it. That's alright.

* * *

People have to eat. It's just one of those things. So they're at some shithole diner somewhere and Dean heads to the restroom and goes into a stall and shuts the door and leans against the wall, because his head doesn't hurt. It should, but it doesn't. Only he feels cold, a little, on the surface of his skin. He waits for a while but nothing else happens, so he goes back and sits across from Sam and, yeah, he's hungry enough to eat everything he ordered.

He doesn't mention about the sounds that aren't there. The noise of her body. He doesn't say a word.

That night, she's on the news. They watch the whole segment, and find out her name, which they hadn't known, and Sam bites his lip at the picture of her on the screen. She's smiling. They show the house from the outside, they talk a little bit about what was inside. Not a lot, though—it's six o'clock, people are trying to eat.

Dean knows his eyes are wider than they should be. He can feel the skin of his eyelids. He starts to get up, changes his mind, and sits back down. Sam doesn't look at him. On the second try he makes it to his feet, walks outside to stand in the parking lot, where the sun streams over everything and lights the ground on fire. He takes a few breaths, shakes his head at himself. Rubs his hands on his thighs and clenches his fists once, briefly.

She wasn't supposed to be there. No one was supposed to be there.

"Jesus," he says aloud, and shivers at the sound of his voice.

Sam comes banging out through the door half an hour later and in a low voice tells him, "We have to go back."

He says, "What?"

"We have to go back," Sam repeats. "Her blood—Dean, it was everywhere. We burned your clothes. It was _all over the room._"

Of course it was. He smooths his hands against his thighs.

All over the damn room.

The poltergeist is gone now, though, and it takes more than five fucking minutes to make a vengeful spirit out of a little girl, or even the ghost of one. So there's nothing going on, nothing to raise an eyebrow. And no one even knew they were there. They could just stroll into town. Burn the place to the ground.

"They'll have cleaned it up, Sam," he tells his brother, quietly. "They'll scrub the room, hell they might tear out the walls, rip up the floor."

"But we can't just—"

"_Sam._" Dean raises his head, meets his eyes. "We'll wait. Okay? What are we going to do, burn the place down while there are people in it? Jesus."

Sam opens and shuts his mouth, briefly. He doesn't say anything when Dean goes back into the room, sits down at the table by the window.

* * *

They go back a week later. Nothing's happened. But they go back.

The house is empty. Big blank windows, white walls stark against the sky. Dean feels his lips pull back, and schools his face into something calmer. Makes his hands still. His skin cool.

"We're just going to check," Sam says, voice all infuriating calm. Trying to soothe, like there's something that needs soothed. Dean gives a little nod.

They get inside without any trouble. Same as before. Sam goes in the kitchen and Dean heads for the second floor. Pauses with a foot on the bottom step, looks up the long staircase. Breathes out, lets his finger rest on the trigger, pistol quiet in his hands. Goes up without a sound.

Not a sound. Not a breath. Not a single noise. He's a big man, but light and fast. And there's nothing here. The stillness is huge. He slips down the hall through grey clear shadows, through the peculiar silence of air in an enclosed space. Dust in the corners, along the molding on the floor. The hallway is carpeted and makes no under his shoes. No boots for this job. That was never in question.

He pauses outside the room. The door is shut. He knows what's on the other side, but he doesn't _know._ It's like a tooth torn out, an empty eye socket. Present in its absence. He swallows, splays a hand on the door, heavy and cold and wooden. But no. He'll have to turn the doorknob to get it to open.

The cold brass turns softly, easily. Like liquid. He leans his shoulder lightly on the door, takes a breath. Another. And the sound of her voice. The wind tearing through the room. A storm. The sound of her voice.

He pushes the door open and raises his weapon.

He'd thought they would clean the room. It's been a week—more than a week. But it stinks, it _reeks_, and he slams into the door with his shoulders and hits the opposite wall in the hallway and he can feel his ribs pressing in and out against the paint, the cold, the dust and shadows. The silence. Her voice.

He makes a noise on an inhalation. Just once, as his throat tries to close up. That's it, and he slams his lips together and his nostrils flare and he sucks in the smell and the noise and the color of the light, in the room, the smeared rust and brown like old, old machinery, like factory walls, like derelict trains. Engines. Old dead metal, flaking away, eaten up with holes.

He's got a gun in his hands. Both hands. And when a form coalesces in the room, pale white and big eyed and with her mouth open on a noise he doesn't know if he's hearing with his ears, he lifts up both hands and points the heavy weapon. And he shoots her in the face.

Sam comes pounding up the stairs and Dean doesn't let himself be manhandled. Sharply shrugs his brother off, stomps down the hallway and down the stairs, and is outside on the front walk before Sam even makes it through the door.

They burn the house down.

-end

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_Additional: The idea that a vengeful spirit can hang on if even a drop of blood remains strikes me as a very difficult problem to deal with. I've been told that there are special cleaning services you can hire if there's a violent crime in your home, because it isn't as if the police are going to clean it up for you. No matter how you think about it, that's pretty awful—someone you love dies and then you have to clean it up too. It's probably a good thing the show doesn't go into this kind of thing too much; it's pretty depressing._


End file.
